


rain down absolution

by creabimus



Category: The Lorien Legacies - All Media Types, The Lorien Legacies - Pittacus Lore
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-17
Updated: 2015-03-17
Packaged: 2018-03-16 11:11:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3486047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creabimus/pseuds/creabimus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The water's filled with sharks, but you can't deny to want to submerge yourself anyway.</p><p>(In which the war is at an end, and Five gradually feels the weight of past mistakes on his shoulders.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	rain down absolution

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CarnivorousMoogle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CarnivorousMoogle/gifts).



> lyrics from "the lament of eustace scrub" by the oh hello's

father, have mercy

i know that i have gone astray

when i saw my reflection

it was a stranger beneath my face  

 

 

 

 

**one**

 

 

 

 

Five is no stranger to the taste of blood in his mouth. He's only partially confused because it isn't actually his own that allows the metallic taste to roll over his tastebuds. City night life is not something he's too keen to experience, but Marina insisted they do something fun (although Five's definition of fun didn't actually mean going out to eat like normal people; he would have preferred sitting in his room adding to the conglomeration of sketches on the white walls).

The war ended precisely four years ago. Five had four years to gain the trust of three of the remaining Loric and two of the humans. He doesn't know if that's an accomplishment or a failure; he'll decide that once he finishes decorating the walls of his room.

He almost felt good sitting at the table at the ridiculously expensive restaurant that he didn't even bother to remember the name of. The others were laughing at something John probably said, and if Five didn't know any better he'd think they were a family. Himself excluded.

It isn't like they aren't. But there's something that makes everyone hesitate to build a family after everyone else has lost their own.

And, while Five excuses himself to use the restroom, that's when he's given a punch to the face.

(He should have expected it. Even if the war's over he has every reason to be on his guard.)

"You're that damned Loric traitor, aren't you?"

All conversation stops now if it hadn't already when Five was first punched. His hand rises, touching his split lip and tasting the blood that beads from the wound. He doesn't bother to wonder how the man (drunk from the looks of it) knows this. Everyone in the world does.

The drunk immediately punches him again, but Five's skin solidifies just as the man's fist connects with his mouth. Fresh blood slips into his mouth; Five doesn't even bother to care about the man's bleeding (and probably broken) hand.

A string of curses flies from the man's mouth as he stumbles into a table, knocking over wine glasses, then runs outside. Maybe he should feel bad for using his Legacies, but it shouldn't matter if it was in self defense.

"Five?" Marina's stares, though her expression is unreadable. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine." He brushes the wrinkles out of his shirt and storms into the restroom. His feet take him to the mirror as his hand reaches up to touch his split lip. His good eye was hit, and it'll still leave a bruise if Marina or John doesn't tend to it.

(He can't really say he wants either of them to.)

When he comes out, the falter in the atmosphere is what he notices first. People steal glances at him and whispers are exchanged between partners as he finds his seat at his table. The tension is enough for something to knot into his stomach; he stands up abruptly and walks outside leisurely as if all he wants to do it gaze up at the stars clouded by pollution.

The chilly air snakes around his body as his hands slip into his pockets. He's not wearing anything fancy like a restaurant like this demands. None of them are, but Marina at least looks the most presentable out of all of them. It's fitting since she _is_ the oldest.

When Five's head tips back to look at the tops of buildings and the cloudless sky, he doesn't expect to get any wisdom from the view. All he does is think about how much his fingers itch to hold a pencil and start sketching again.

"Quit avoiding Marina. She's actually worried about you." Five doesn't bother to turn around. He doesn't actually want to talk to anyone right now, let alone Nine.

He still mutters, "You say that like no one worries about me."

Nine doesn't dignify him with a laugh. "I wonder why,"

Five's head falls; his eye scans the cracks in the pavement. The green weeds push through the gaps; they look like quick strokes of a paintbrush. Nine eventually goes back into the restaurant, leaving Five to wonder why he even came out. Five doesn't go back, and instead his feet bring him to the mansion he shares with the rest of them. He swears his feet echo on the walls as he climbs the staircase, and when he opens the door to his room even it seems more empty than usual.

The house is a prison on a good day. On a bad one, however, it's a graveyard.

(When he finally falls asleep a few hours later, the continuous silence makes it clear that the others won't be back for quite a while.)

 

\---

 

 "Sit still!"

Marina's grabs Five's chin, moving his face so her fingertips can glide across the bruising skin and bleeding lip. "I won't be able to heal you if you keep turning your head away."

It takes all of Five's willpower not to scowl. He knows better than to piss her off, but he opens his mouth anyway as he feels the icy sensation of her Legacy numbing the skin.

"Why don't you hate me?"

She pauses. The icy sensation fades away as she pulls her hands from his face. Her eyes dart around the room, but when she finally meets his gaze she sighs.

"Because I know you've changed. You've gained almost everyone's respect, isn't that enough?" Five thought so, but apparently not. He shrugs and doesn't speak, so she takes it as her cue to finish healing him. Within a few minutes, she's finished, so he stands up and lets his feet carry him to his room while his thoughts wander.

No, he muses, it isn't enough. What would be enough is not being assaulted by humans because of who he used to be.

And maybe he wants answers to why he cannot become someone who is not looked down upon, and maybe he just wants to let what's reality stay stagnant. He can always figure out the specifics later.

 

\---

 

The pencil scratches along the wall, no doubt making a noise loud enough that Adam can hear it through the wall that separates their rooms. Five doesn't particularly care about what plagues the Mog. Even if he tried to scrounge sympathy for them he has no doubt it would fade instantaneously.

Five's room is located on the third floor of the mansion, and among his room are John's, Nine's, and Adam's. The second floor belongs to Marina, Six, and Ella. Sam, Sarah, and Malcolm visit frequently - Sarah's visits last longer and are more frequent than anyone else's. Five isn't surprised - no one really is - and the whole house is holding its breath until John finally proposes. Sam used to visit more often when the smell of roses and bleeding hearts were in the air, but now he devotes his time to attending college. Five has no doubts the human will do something extraordinary in life. Malcolm visits occasionally to see how everyone fares - he's become like a father to all of them, but no one admits it. 

Once, John entertained the idea of finishing high school, and then attending college. Out of all of the Loric, he's the most passionate about being the most human. But that was years ago. Now, the winds carry different messages in the wind regardless of the people who stay the same beneath it.

His fingers brush against the figure etched with pencil and splattered with paint, then the unfinished landscape behind it. Lines crisscross over muddled designs, and oranges, yellows, blues, and greens mix unintentionally a ways from where his main, unfinished artwork stares at him. He suspects it'll take months before the entire thing is finished if he goes at this rate. It was supposed to be therapeutic, but when drawing used to be the one thing he held close to him before, now it's become little more than a chore he has to force himself to do.

The pencil tip breaks, leaving a dark gray dot in the middle of the figure's face.

He scowls.

Night lasts too long, now, and with prolonged days thanks to his sleepless nights, he never can escape his thoughts anymore. The others walk on eggshells around him (and he with them), even Marina with her eyes glowing sympathy cannot forget what he did to her, he knows. He knows that his hands are as scarlet as the blood he once shed, and he knows his eye is as dark at the ones of the Mogs, and he knows his skin is now as pale as theirs. Maybe he'll start to speak Mogadorian, soon. 

Then he and Adam will finally have more common ground with which to relate. 

His fingers grasp another pencil (it's almost like the sword, almost, but it's too small and much easier to conceal - but the point is sharp enough the point is sharp enough the point is sharp enough the point is -) and the graphite presses to the white wall. He imagines the scene before him, but he cannot bring it to full fruition because of the ache in his body. It's funny.

The tip drags across the figure, but he pulls the pencil away before he can color in the hair once he hears footsteps outside his room. They stop at his door, and as the slab of wood creaks open slowly, his body tenses. He turns his head and sees Ella's worried face. Her auburn hair is tied in a messy bun atop her head, and she wears jeans and a jacket with navy socks. She briefly looks at his drawings on the wall and something changes in her face. "Hi, Five. I thought you might be awake." She shifts her weight on her feet: "Do you want something to eat?"

She's just a teenager, but even Ella's prone to getting awed looks at the high school she attends. She'd practically begged Marina to let her attend school. With the money they'd gotten after the war, all of them could have attended prestigious schools without having to get a job, but Ella was the only one to stick with her decision long enough to actually attend. Five doesn't know why she puts up with it, but he guesses she must be admired for it.

He shakes his head, slightly. "No." He swallows the four-year lump in his throat as he waits for Ella to leave. She doesn't.

"Five, we can't help you if you don't talk to us." We being Marina, Ella, John, and by extension, Sarah. We being the people who shouldn't give two shits about him. No one else does. 

"I don't need any help." 

She doesn't reply, and all she does before she leaves is give him an expression with her lips turned downward and her brown eyes too bright.

 

\---

 

His lungs ache to breathe the air he drank in when he was a child. Specifically, when he was Cody and his life still meant something.

 

\---

 

The dark circles under his eye grows, and his lips crack from the lack of moisture in the air, and he thinks he tastes the tang of iron in the stagnant air (or maybe just the memory it brings). No one comments on the gradual decomposition of his psyche anymore (quite frankly, he's surprised they said anything the first time he showed up on the doorstep) and he decides that, two weeks from now he'll be gone.

There will always be people in other places, even if so many remember him as the traitor and not as the man wallowing in his guilt. He hasn't been to Canada, yet. He's been saving it for when he feels something other than the ache in his bones. 

He thinks he'll go to India, first. Then perhaps to locations both infamous and unknown, or wherever the wind decides to take him. The less people who know him, the better. He will tell Marina that he's leaving, and through her the others will find out because her conscience will weigh too heavily for her to keep it a secret for long. 

Then again, she's still hiding the fact that she despises him. So maybe not. 

He fills a single backpack with the necessities: the metal and rubber balls, a sketchbook, the broken pencil, and a few American bills he was given in compensation after the Mog War.

It's too much, he thinks, but at the same time he knows it's nothing. 

 

\--

 

He leaves on a Monday. 

The last thing he sees is the unfinished sketch on his wall staring at him. He'll come back to finish it eventually. 

Eventually.

 

 

 

 

 

**two**

 

 

 

"Two croissants."

"That'll be 5.49."

Five hands the woman a ten, collects his change, then grabs the bag forcefully as he catches her narrowed eyes once she finally recognizes him. He doesn't give her a scowl in return, and instead he hopes his blank expression is enough to convey how much he cannot stand her. The line of bodies move to avoid him as he stalks down the queue to open the door. His eye blinks against the sun as blaring horns and screeching tires berate his ears. 

His shoulder collides with someone else's, but he ignores their indignant shouts as he rounds the corner of the coffee shop. Storm clouds hang overhead, but the speed of the pedestrians says that the sky might be clear and sunny instead of a foreboding gray. Someone catches his eye, and throws him a glare rich in hatred, so Five elects to keep his gaze on the sky. Buildings arc above his head and a chill settles in the air. The months are, gradually, becoming colder. 

He takes one of the croissants out of the brown bag and takes a bite - it's too dry - as he moves further into the city. He's faintly aware that someone will follow him. If he had to pick, he'd say Ella. Marina knows not to bother him. 

He thinks they're the same, in that aspect.

He zips his jacket once he finishes both croissants, and just as he's about to fly off, he catches a conversation a few yards away from him. He slows enough to hear what they're saying but walks fast enough as to not arouse suspicion. 

_\--Do you see that guy? That's Five, the Loric Traitor.--_

_\--He turned back to the side of the Loric during the end of the war, though, Frankly, all the hatred towards him is pointless if he's good again.--_

_\--You don't know that, Bill! He could turn on them! I think the Loric are idiots to trust him.--_

Five swallows. He grimaces. He's changed, he swears. He'll swear on his own life if he has to convince everyone to believe him. But he won't be able to convince everyone. This will forever be his title even after he dies and all that's left of the Garde are in history books which will embellish all the incriminating details. 

His knees bend before he can change his mind, and within seconds he's flying through the clouds over New York. The cold sinks into his bones as the wind whips around his body, but  everything feels much more peaceful up here. 

(If only that could last where his feet touch the ground.)

 

\---

 

The ache grows as he soars through the clouds. Regardless, of all the Legacies he has he's most grateful for Flight.

 

\---

 

Five shields his face from the blaring rays of sun while he glides through the mountain range. Peaks covered in snow greet his eyesight when he looks up, and he finally lands where one of the mountains smooth out to create level ground. Pale blue skies stare down at him as the cold sinks into his coat, his skin, his bones. He closes his eye and frowns.

He can picture Eight's face as clearly as the back of his own hand even though it's been over four years since he last saw him. His green eyes are still as vibrant as suns and twinkle as much as the stars hanging in the sky, and his black hair curly and his skin a copper-brown. But his smile is what makes the ache in Five's chest only grows because he should still be smiling on Earth instead of in Five's head. Five thinks he would give anything to stop this ache in his bones, and if doing that means bringing Eight back in replace of him he'd do it in a heartbeat.

He's just another waste of space, anyway. But he's not, not really. He should have the people on his side by now (it's been four _years_ ) but the world hates him too much to see him as anything else than a murderer. 

He didn't mean it.

He never meant it.

He's sorry, so _sorry_ , and the tears slip from his eye as the cold creates jagged cracks in his exposed skin, and he thinks anything would be better than this life he's living. 

Can he even call it a life anymore when he can do nothing to absolve himself of his sins. 

(He shouldn't care. He tells himself he doesn't care but he does and it hurts more than anything he's ever known. It hurts more than when Marina took out his eye.)

He opens his eye and stares back at the landscape before him. White-peaked mountains rise up to pierce the pale blue serenity of the sky, but even if the sky provides some serenity, he knows everything must come back to the ground in the end.

"Eight," His voice shakes without permission. His tongue is a swollen weight in his mouth that forms words without his knowledge yet stumbles over the ones which he wants to say. His fists clench, perhaps to steady himself, perhaps to keep the heat from leaving his body. "I know how you must think of me. Everyone thinks of me as a traitor. Well, they aren't wrong, are they." He gives a harsh laugh that cracks immediately. 

"What I did to you was so wrong, so fucked up. I --" His heart hammers in his chest. "I deserve to be forgiven, don't I? I'm on the side of the Loric now. I've been on their side for years yet no one will forgive me." He pauses. "I don't even forgive myself, isn't that so fucking -- Isn't that so pathetic? I want people to forgive me but I can't do it myself because I'm so -- I don't even know why I came up here anymore I just need --" His body shakes with dry heaves, and he closes his eye. He could imagine he's anywhere else but here, if he wanted, but the cold (unfortunately) grounds him. "I don't deserve this. I don't deserve _this_. I'm just the Loric Traitor.

"Eight, I never meant to kill you. But I did, and that's one mistake I can't go back from. I don't deserve to even _be_ here."

He pauses. For a second, a minute, a lifetime condensed into the weight of his mistakes and the consequences hanging off his fragile, glass-etched body.

"Life might still be shit, but you deserved to make it your own instead of have it taken away from you. I'm sorry."

The wind howls in his ears; the sound drowns out the rapid beating of his heart as he inhales. Exhales. Repeat. Repeat. It isn't working. Repeat. Why isn't he calming down he should be calming down he isn't calm anymore was he ever really calm. His body yearns to move, yet his legs won't obey him even though there's nothing really here on these mountains, just a figment of the boy he barely knew.

He's not even a figment anymore because that would require him to have stayed behind with them.

"There's this ache in my chest now. It doesn't go away, so it's probably just another defect in my DNA." He stops. "The people hate me, you know? I hear their conversations. See their expressions. Thirteen year old me would hate me, too. Hell, I hate myself now and I'm twenty-three. Don't feel like twenty-three, though. I feel like I'm a little kid again.

"But I wouldn't have killed someone if I'd been a kid. so I'm just a fucked up adult."

He swears he sees a figure in he corner of eye, so when his heart stills and his breath catches in his throat he turns his head to find nothing there. 

"My Cepan, Rey, told me that on average, Loric live up to two hundred years. That's over twice as long as humans, and in their pathetic ninety-year lifespans they can break after just thirty years of living. How long do you think it'd take for me to break?"

 

\---

 

The chain of islands reminds of him of the one he and Rey lived on, but only because of the reality that being surrounded my water makes you no more at peace. 

No one recognizes him here, perhaps because he just looks like another tourist among the islanders, or perhaps because no one cares who he is.

His dark olive skin stands out too much, here, but blends in with the blur of colors all around him. Greens jut out from leaves, mingling with the brown-gray-umber trunks and golden-tinted sand. Blue skies envelope him with the promise to take him away, but he only ends up falling back to the ground.

Tourists scurry past him causing shoulder to bump into his, feet to step on his. If they knew him, they'd think twice about where they walked.

"Mister?"

Five's body tenses before he even registers that a child - a little girl - is speaking to him. He turns. The girl's frizzy red hair threatens to break out of two messily done braids as her blue eyes stare up at him with impossible curiosity. He wishes he could say he smiled.

"Are you a pirate?"

His eye widens. "I-"

"Because if you are, you don't look too good for a pirate. You're not even scary!" She stares at him with her hands on her hips as if she deserves some explanation. Freckles dot her nose and under her eyes, and he swears he's seen her before.

His lips quirk upward slightly. "How'd you know I was a pirate?"

She points to her left eye as she lifts her chin in pride. A grin appears on her face, and he finds himself smiling back. She can't be more than eleven or twelve years old. "Only pirates wear eyepatches."

Impulsively, his fingers brush against the fabric as pain tears through his eye socket again. Legions of bitter cold ants spread out beneath the skin and into the eyeball no longer present, and his good eye blurs as pain explodes in his foot. The bones are breaking and the skin is tearing, and his mind is ripping itself apart as the Loric dare to tamper with his still-beating heart.

He wipes the tears in his eye, and he finally notices the girl holding a tissue up to him. Her lips lift in a smile when he takes it. "My mom told me you should always have a spare tissue handy in case anyone is crying." Her chin lifts and her hands rest on her hips, and he knows he's seen her before.

"Thanks."

Her smile spreads into a gap-toothed grin, and for a moment all that exists in the silk-thread universe is a man bearing a crown of crushed stars and a girl made of stardust at his feet. 

 

\---

 

It's been years, decades, centuries, lifetimes, since he's seen her face.

 

\---

 

"Emma, I'm not with the Mogadorians anymore. I haven't been since the last stages of the war."

"Then say it with conviction." 

Five scowls. His hands ball into fists. The stars glittering against the backdrop of black hide behind towering buildings and pollution, and he wishes he had never set foot in this city again. He should have expected she might be here since neither of them could let go of the past. Her arms cross over her chest as her eyes narrow.

"You can't do it, can you? You're still going to be a part of the Mogadorians and betray your own people? I saw the news when the interviews came out, you know, so I know that you murdered one of your own. Find someone you haven't already betrayed to tell your sob story to, Cody, because I couldn't give a shit." She pauses, then: "Oh, wait, you _can't_."

His nails dig into his palms. "Shut the fuck up, Emma! You have no idea what you're talking about! I've done a lot of shit in my life and I'm sorry for it, okay? Quit with your selfish antagonism already."

"Tell that to the girl who trusted you with her deepest secrets." 

He sighs. His shoulders relax. 

"Sorry I said anything to you at all. I won't bother you again." 

 

\---

 

The half finished sketch stares at him from the white wall in his room. 

 

\---

 

"I don't know if there was a God on Lorien. If I'd been less of a dick to Rey when I was a child, I might have asked him if there was anything they worshiped up there. Marina, might have known. She was probably old enough before we left to know about the customs of the Loric, and maybe she remembers what it looked like.

"I probably should backtrack. The humans say you're omniscient, but I doubt you would've kept track of the lives of a few aliens when you got millions of humans to look after.

"Ten of the Loric Garde came here when they were children, and these children were accompanied by their own Cepans. They went to different parts on Earth to start a new life so the Cepans could train their Garde in peace before the Mogadorians found them. I don't know how the first two died, but once they did my Cepan, Rey, was killed.

"The third died after I defected to the Mogadorian's side and the fourth -- The fourth I killed. He was Number Eight, and I stabbed him through the heart.

"I meant to kill Number Nine that day, but instead I made a martyr of a boy I almost liked.

"I'm not proud of it. I regret that moment every single day of my life. I can't get the sight out of my head, and whenever I dream I see the blood from the wound soaking his shirt. I deserve it. Why wouldn't I deserve to be haunted with it for the rest of my life? The others say they forgive me but I know they're lying to make me feel like I'm a part of the Loric. Mogadorian blood still runs in my veins. 

"I can't even forgive myself. I don't want to. All I want is for the ache to stop. 

"Humans usually go here for forgiveness, don't they? I don't know why I'm here, but at least that's not a lie." 

 

\---

 

A hand rouses him from sleep, and when he blinks his bleary eye into focus he sees an elderly woman dressed in black standing over him. Her lips purse, and she waits as he stands up and looks around him. At his back, the pews end thousands of feet away from him, and at his front Jesus Christ hangs from his cross while the statue of Mary stands to his left. Marble upon marble upon marble, yet he hardly feels insignificant in a place this grand. 

"You were crying in your sleep. I thought a wild animal was within the church till I saw you sleeping." She squints. "I've see your face before. Have you been on TV lately?"

"No. You're probably mistaking me for someone else."

"Humph. Well, no more sleeping in the church you hear me? Now the Lord'll listen to your woes so talk to him and that'll solve your crying." The old woman hobbles away after giving him a nasty look, and he watches her sit in the pew directly across from his. He digs in his pocket for the tissue the little girl had given to him a few weeks ago, but he doesn't take it out of his pocket. 

It's not like the whole world's terrible, he knows, but his own little pocket just sinks deeper into the ground with each passing day. It's not like more people like the little girl don't exist, but they never exist within his field of vision.

He doesn't believe in God. But if he did he'd have been damned to Hell a long, long time ago and no amount of penance would have brought him back.

 

\---

 

Red, oranges, and yellows explode then zigzag away from the sun as it settles into the ocean's gapping mouth. The midnight blue sky births the stars one by one as the rays of sunlight fade away, and the wind slows around his standing body. Dirt settles around the gaps between each blade of grass as the half of the world begins to prepare itself for the incoming night.

As the world pauses, Five's hand reaches for a pencil that isn't beside him so he can finish a sketch that hasn't been started, so the corners of his lips curve downward as his eye flows the paths of the millions of lines on the horizon. They crisscross each other thousands upon thousands of times, stopping only to start again at a new point in a completely different direction. Colors bloom from the descending dark then fade away.

He'll have to go back, eventually.

The world will still turn if he comes back regardless of how he feels towards the people in the building, and as the world turns the days will eventually grant him a reprieve from all of this.

Yet he cannot go when he is still so young. Eight still weighs on his mind, and Marina, and Ella, and Emma, and his mistakes are too great for him to carry so he must given in before he succumbs to the pressure building in his heart.

He does not deserve to idly watch the sunset as if it means something to him. 

(Why should he return to a place where he does not belong?)

The world will still turn and his heart will still be too young longer after the humans he knows have died, so --

 

 

 

 

**three**

 

 

 

 

Dawn arrives with little more than a drizzle.

 

\---

 

Nine stares at him incredulously once he finally opens the front door. His eyes shift to the space around Five before returning back to settle on him, and his lips form a tight line. "You look like shit."

"I feel like shit." Five's arms fall to his sides as Nine shifts away from the entrance so he can step inside the mansion, and once he steps inside the temperature plummets twenty degrees. Nine offers no explanation. There's no need for one.

Stairs spiral upwards from the foyer as cream coated walls branch off to form hallways and rooms, and from the ceiling too high above his head sprouts a glass chandelier too elegant for the people it hangs over. The scents of coffee beans and lavender emerge from the kitchen practically blocked off from the rest of the house. Too many near-explosions have occurred there, so John and Marina are the only ones allowed in. A familial air which Five will never experience spreads throughout the mansion. 

Nine's footsteps peeter off to the second floor as Five navigates the mansion with heavy footfalls to find his old room. A thin metal sign hangs on the doorknob. 

"Five?" 

He pauses. Turns to look at Ella whose eyes say nothing of how she, or anyone else, might have felt since he left. If she's anything like Nine like she wants to be, she probably felt relief. Her auburn hair rests in a simple braid across her left shoulder, and the red shirt she wears looks too much like blood.

"I heard you come in, then Nine told me." She gives him a sweet smile. "You won't find Marina or Six here, if you were wondering. They've gone on what Nine says is an 'early honeymoon'." Her eyes move over the gradual decay of his face and his clothes. "Did it help?"

He could answer her, but he feels as if saying anything regarding his disappearance would hinder the healing process he swears it might have begun. He doesn't feel better by any since of the word, but he swears he'll feel something down the road.

Finally, he gives her a half-hearted shrug and slips inside the growing darkness of his room. The incomplete sketch on his wall stares at him with the insatiable desire to be finished, and the magnetic pull drags his feet across the floor so his fingers can run against the coarse paint job on the unfortunate empty walls. 

His hand grabs the nearest pencil, and he begins sketching.

 

\---

 

By the time he finishes coloring in the first figure, he's started over ten times at ten different stages.

It takes him four days.

 

\---

 

Marina and Six return just as Five finishes sketching the second figure. Their eyes tell of the same happiness once unknown to both of them during the war. When he sees their interlocking fingers he expects them to wear matching bands of silver, but their fingers remain bare. He would be happy for them, but he determines that he cannot even be happy for himself these days so he gives Marina a nod when she meets his gaze and hopes that conveys what words cannot.

The night of their return, he begins finishing the second figure.

 

\---

 

As the sun signals the end of the night, Ella's footsteps tread lightly throughout the mansion as she hangs blue, green, white, red, and orange fairy lights to the walls and staircases. She hangs mistletoe from every doorway and tops the pine tree in the living room with a small yellow star. Cartons of eggnog pile up at the back of the refrigerator and the scent of cinnamon fills the air.

When he passes her to get a glass of water, she offers him a grin. "Merry Christmas, Five."

 

\---

 

Right after he finishes sketching the third figure, his eye closes and he falls to the floor in a heap. 

 

\---

 

Marina admires the ring on Sarah's finger with a smile as Nine claps John on the back. Six demands that John treat Sarah well even though they all know he'd do nothing to hurt her, and Ella asks the date of the wedding. Sarah beams at all of them while John looks as if he'll barf at any moment.

("Don't tell me you thought she'd say no, Johnny.")

Five stands back because he knows this moment isn't for him, but Sarah still catches his eye and gives him a small smile as if to acknowledge him within their circle.

He wishes he could have given her a smile in return.

 

\---

 

 

By the time he finishes coloring the third figure, he wonders if he'll finish the scene at all.

 

\---

 

"Even if you were a traitor, you still saved us in the end. Look, I know I'm supposed to hate you but I think we can both agree we were wrong." 

Emma sighs. Her eyes move to the chimera playing behind him, and a smile almost appears on her face as her hands pull her jacket closer to her body. She pushes the hair out of her face. "I'm not saying we're good now, but I'm saying it's stupid to let the past define us." Freckles dot the skin beneath her eyes, and a faint scar runs along the bridge of her nose. 

"Well, bye." She turns to leave, but before she can move he stops her.

"Emma, wait. I'm sorry."

Her eyebrows raise, but she still gives him a small smile before she leaves.

 

\---

 

Greens mingle with the blues and reds, and the sharp contours of the figures are not sharp enough as the colors bleed into every crag and crevice they can reach. Swears tumble from his mouth as his fingers smudge the lines, and once his elbow knocks over his mug of coffee he stands up and stalks away from the wall. 

Halfway finished. It's halfway finished and already everything is falling apart. He supposes drawing the scene again was going to be refreshing once he began sketching again, but all he feels is stretched thin. He closes his eye and decides on giving up, but --

He's gone months wandering aimlessly only to come back to the place he does not belong only to finish a drawing, and if he throws everything away now he will only be feeding the beast tearing away at his soul.

(And he thinks, someday, it will be worth it in the end.)

He opens his eye and takes a pencil in his hand.

 

\---

 

A light tapping occurs once at his bedroom door, then three hard knocks follow it along with a disgruntled yell of "I know you're in there, Five. You hardly ever come out." The yell prompts Five to set down the pencils before he opens the door with an annoyed expression. Nine stands in the doorway with his hand rubbing the back of his neck. His brown eyes land everywhere except on Five. 

"It's three in the morning." Five states with his hand poised on the doorknob, and Nine finally meets his gaze. 

"That means you're the only one allowed to be up at this hour, eh?" The taller man sighs. "I'm not here out of my own free will. Ella made me com down because she thought you were receding back into yourself again." Nine peers over his shoulder at the state of Five's room and whistles. "And she was right. Christ, are you a hoarder now?"

"Why are you here?"

Nine's shoulders tense. His Adam's apple bobs as he swallows. The hand on his neck falls to his side. "I was a dick to you. Sorry. Bye." He turns to leave but Five grabs his arm, and in hindsight Five decides that was a foolish decision. Nine's head turns back, and his eyes narrow as he tears his arm from Five's grip.

"You don't get to say sorry then leave. You made my life shit when you first found me, so you don't get to give a half-assed apology and pretend that makes up for the shit you put me through." Five hisses as Nine steps back. Nine's eyebrows raise. 

"The shit _I_ put you through? You betrayed us! You betrayed your people and murdered Eight! You're the one who should be groveling at my feet, begging for me to forgive you, not the other way around!"

"And I have done that! I've apologized over and over yet you're the one who refuses to believe that anything I say could be anything but a lie! You've done nothing but refuse to believe I've changed. Newsflash, the world's not black and white, and the war's over so you can stop being a piece of shit now."

Nine glares at him, but gradually the lines on in face soften as he runs a hand through his tangled black hair. The hatred between them begins to lessen to simmer down, if only slightly, and Nine sighs. "Jesus. Fine. We're both two fucked up pieces of shit, and we're both obtuse enough that we forgot the world's bigger than us. Sorry for being an asshole to you since we met."

Five's gaze falls to the carpet floor. Dust slots itself between the threads. "Sorry for betraying all of you and everything that happened because of it." When Five looks back up, Nine's staring at him with an unreadable expression. He grunts, then disappears down the hall. 

 

\---

 

Gradually, Nine's gaze becomes less venomous and instead become more neutral, and the words he says become less icy and more casual. As the two talk, the world gradually blurs around them until the future becomes a little less obscure.

 

\---

 

As the sun slots itself high in the sky amongst the pearly, white clouds and baby blue sky, Five finishes the last touches of his drawing and steps away from the wall.

Eight stands at the center of the drawing with his hands outstretched and scarlet pouring from the wound in his heart. Streaking of yellow and gold emanate from his body as the green around him decays into a dull, lifeless brown as poignant as the sword in his heart. The scarlet from his wound pours into Five's hands, then Marina's heart, then Nine's eyes until a hesitant halo is formed by the interlocking effects of Five's betrayal. 

The clouds cascade from the bottle blue sky in ribbons as the sun's light shies away from the four figures below it. Jagged, hurried lines mark the end and beginning of the trees standing witness to the crime before them, and on the ground at Eight's feet scarlet mixes with the green and dark umber of the soil as the earth vows to rid the physical evidence of the scene. 

Eight, as always, stares at Five when Five looks at him. 

Five collapses on his bed and stares up at the ceiling.

And he smiles.

 

 

 

 

when I touch the water

they tell me I could be set free

so I'll come around

someday


End file.
